Make it (less) work

Opinion

I spent most of the weekend catching up on household chores, and to make tasks like vacuuming up embarrassing amounts of dog fur go faster, I turned on my cable company’s ‘90s Hits music station. Boyz II Men, TLC, Blackstreet … I’m not going to lie: a lot of cabbage patching occurred.

What surprised me more than my outdated dance moves, though, was the fact that I remembered most of the songs word for word. Most mornings, I forget whether I closed my garage door before I’m half a block away, but I apparently have no trouble recalling every line of an Ace of Base song I haven’t heard since I was 11.

Memory is funny like that. We program apps, scrawl appointments on calendars and paste sticky notes everywhere in order to remember essential things like picking up our own children from school. And yet, we have no trouble yelling “Who is Octomom?” when “Jeopardy!” requires it of us. It seems we’re just better at retaining information when it’s fun.

Meeting with an insurance agent — whether for an annual review or to finally set up an estate plan — seems like it lands pretty squarely in the “un-fun” category. No wonder, then, that so many people these days are walking around with no or too little coverage.

It’s a hard problem to fix. Purchasing life insurance is just never going to be as fun as, say, belting out a Hootie & The Blowfish song in the wrong key.

But that doesn’t mean agents shouldn’t try. There are a lot of chore-like tasks out there that get better because of the people who perform them. I wouldn’t really look forward to something as mundane as a regular haircut if it weren’t for the fact that it gives me an hour to gossip about celebrities with my stylist. I haven’t forgotten a hair appointment yet.

I realize my memory theory is highly unscientific — as anything based on ‘90s music must be. But I’d bet the more you rock your clients’ socks, the less you’ll have to jog their memories when it comes to annual reviews or referrals.

So what can you do to make insurance shopping more fun? Why aren’t you doing it?